'To Bless All Mankind' June 6, 2016 Issue

The moral action in naming genocide

<i>The Monitor’s</i> Editorial Board

Adapted from an article published in The Christian Science Monitor, March 18, 2016.

Under pressure from Congress, the Obama administration declared on March 17 that the Islamic State has committed genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shiite Muslims. The designation is only a legal stance, one based on a 1948 international treaty written after the Holocaust. It does not trigger the United States to do more than it already is doing in leading a military coalition to defeat IS.

Yet by pinning this worst of all crimes on IS, the US has now joined many other institutions in taking a moral stance. And by definition, morality is not merely a matter of principled words. As Secretary of State John Kerry said in making the designation against this group of Islamist militants, “What is essential is stopping them.”

Four times in the past, the US has designated mass killing as genocide: in Cambodia in 1989, Bosnia in 1993, Rwanda in 1994, and Sudan in 2004. Except in the case of Bosnia, where the US used bombing to force a peace deal, the effect was mainly to stir a diplomatic response or legal action. What might the world expect now as a result of this US designation? This is an important question to ask if humanity is to finally see genocide as obsolete.

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